1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing device and the like such as a personal computer connected to a printer, and more particularly to a control method for font registration with the printer.
2. Related Background Art
Commonly, in a system having a printer and an information processing device connected thereto, font registration areas called “fixed area” and “variable area” are provided at the printer. At the information processing device, the font registration is executed for these “fixed area” and “variable area” in a predetermined font registration method.
Generally, in the case of a printer description language for foreign languages, since the printer description language often has been originally adapted to support English or some of European languages (French, German and the like), the printer description language has been constituted mainly for 1-byte output. Thereafter, as a demand for 2-byte output occurs in a market, additional specification has been added as a supplement to the printer description language. However, since there have been many parts which are not well-defined in the specification, support for the 2-byte output depends on each vendor's capacity.
In addition, as to a printer driver for generating a printer control command, there are different methods for supporting it. Some vendors have released only a driver for 1-byte areas, others have replaced all of font download methods with that for 2-byte areas described in the supplement of the printer description language since some point.
However, in view of a situation where the demand in the 2-byte areas including China becomes high lately, the output of a 2-byte font has been regarded as essential as a function of the printer driver. This is natural because it is a requirement for raising sales to develop a new market, and the new market is Asian countries, in addition to China, where the 2-byte font are used.
However, as to the output of the 2-byte font, there are several languages such as Chinese almost consisting of kanji, Korean mainly consisting of hangul with relatively less characters, Japanese mainly consisting of hiragana and katakana, and also Central Europe (CE) such as Greek and Turkish having only a few characters of the 2-byte font therein. There has been a problem that optimal performance is not necessarily obtained when such languages are registered in the same font registration method. In addition, since the font registration for the 2-byte font uses a much more amount of data than that for a 1-byte font, this problem has been an element which has more effects on the performance.
In this regard, it is possible to consider a method for producing a driver for Chinese having allocated “fixed area” and “variable area” therein to be used in the font registration in consideration of the situation of Chinese almost consisting of kanji, a driver for Korean having allocated “fixed area” and “variable area” therein to be used in the font registration in consideration of the situation of Korean mainly consisting of hangul with relatively less characters, and a driver for Japanese having allocated “fixed area” and “variable area” therein to be used in the font registration in consideration of the situation of Japanese almost consisting of hiragana and katakana, so that each of the drivers is released for its target country. However, this method increases development cost and man-hours for maintenance.
In addition, since, for example, a Japanese resident officer resident in China and the like is supposed to often use the printer driver sold in China, that is, the driver for China in consideration of the situation of Chinese, with a Japanese OS, it also causes inconvenience in this case.